Re:Faceless Terrorism as Creative Evil or Fighting Terrorism by Understanding Man's Capacity for Evil

“When this person was six years old, his father, at the age of 58 retired. The old pensioner, for the next four or five years, moved from one village to another. By the time his son was fifteen years old, he already had seven changes of address and had attended five different schools. This included classes at a prominent monastery. When his father purchased a farm, the son helped with the farming. At this time he started to take singing lessons, sang in the choir, and seriously dreamt of one day taking Holy Orders. The latter was against his father’s wishes, who wanted him to become a civil servant. Not at all interested in following this career, he opposed his father and quite bluntly stated that he would perhaps rather be an artist than a civil servant. To defy his father’s wishes, his grades deteriorated and in the end were so poor that he did not obtain the customary school leaving certificate. The irony is that this was a gifted student, who for lack of industriousness, never achieved excellent results.

“As a young man this person tried to enter art school, but a high school diploma was required, over and above demonstrating excellent talent. Like many young people unable to enter college, he started earning a living by doing a variety of odd jobs: he shoveled snow, beat carpets, and worked as a building labourer. This changed when the political demands of the day resulted in him being drafted into the military. After a very short period of basic military training he was transferred to the front to fight in an exceptionally fierce, violent, and horrible war. Shortly after war broke out he was wounded in the leg. He recovered fairly rapidly, returned to the front, and was promoted to the ranks of the Non-Commissioned Officers. He demonstrated exceptional ability to perform operational tasks allotted to him. His exceptional dedication, patriotism, and disregard of his own life in the performance of his wartime duties were such that he was decorated on two occasions with two of the highest honours for bravery his country could bestow.

“Like so often happens, wars are won and lost. Towards the end of the war this young soldier was recovering in the hospital from temporary blindness suffered in a chemical warfare attack the month before. As is usual, a chaplain visited, and one day, crying, conveyed the sad news to the wounded soldiers that their country had lost the war. The young man recounted the scene and describes in his own words his experience: “Everything went black again before my eyes. I tottered and groped my way back to the ward, threw myself onto my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow. So it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations. In vain the hours in which with mortal fear, clutching at our hearts, we nevertheless did our duty. In vain the death of two million who died. They died for this. Did all this happen only so that a gang of wretched criminals could lay hands on the fatherland?” The young man described that he broke down and wept because, he said, “I could not help it.” The date of this incident was November 11, 1918.

"It was an immense disappointment and shocking disillusionment for this soldier, who in December 1914 was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class for bravery in the field In August 1918 the much coveted Iron Cross First Class, rarely given to a common soldier in the old Imperial Army, was awarded to Corporal Adolph Hitler for single-handedly capturing fifteen enemy soldiers. Twenty one years later this same soldier, then Chancellor of Germany, started World War II to right the wrongs of November 11, 1918.

Gouws, Jacques J. (2000). Combat Stress Inoculation, PTSD Recognition, and Early Detection. Dundas, Ontario, Canada, Pp. 72-73.

Hitler, Adolph. MeinKampf.

Shirer, William. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

“I want peace; only my enemies want war.” – Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)

“How wicked these people must have been to make me do this to them.” –- Adolf Hitler

“Yes, we are barbarians! We shall rejuvenate the world! This world is near its end. It is our mission to cause unrest. The important thing is the overwhelming shock of the fear of death.” – Adolf Hitler

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